Commuter chaos looms as Metro shuts down Wednesday

The Washington rail transit system will shut its doors all day Wednesday for urgent safety inspections — an unprecedented lights-out that threatens to throw the D.C. commute into chaos and brought immediate cries of dismay from area members of Congress.

Metrorail will close for 24 hours, starting at midnight Tuesday, for emergency inspections of its power cables, following a cable fire Monday that forced significant delays. Buses will continue to operate, as will Capital Bikeshare and the newly opened D.C. streetcar.

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The federal Office of Personnel Management said U.S. government offices in the region would be open Wednesday, but that employees have the option for unscheduled telework or to take unscheduled leave. But at this point, the House had no plans to alter its schedule.

The action came five months after a string of lapses that prompted the U.S. Department of Transportation to take over supervision of safety at the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority's four-decade-old rail system.

"This is a stark demonstration of a total agency failure," Rep. John Delaney (D-Md.) said in a statement, while Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) called the 24-hour closure "a gut punch to the hundreds of thousands of commuters who depend on the system."

“The shutdown of the Metrorail system for an entire day in the middle of the work week is an astonishing admission that safety has not been the priority it needs to be at WMATA," Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) said. He called for WMATA to give customers free bus service Wednesday and for the Office of Personnel Management to grant federal workers unscheduled leave or the option to telework.

In a statement, OPM said it is "actively coordinating" with WMATA and others to "assess the current situation," with more guidance to come.

"Disappointing it’s come to this," Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) said on Twitter, "but ppl depend on the safety of Metro. Glad new #WMATA management is treating safety w/ a sense of urgency."

WMATA plans to inspect about 600 "jumper cables" along the entire rail system, according to Paul Wiedefeld, general manager and CEO of Metro, adding that Monday's incident was eerily similar to a fatal smoke outbreak that occurred in the tunnel leading south from the L'Enfant Plaza Metro station in January 2015.

That event killed one passenger and sickened more than 80 others. The National Transportation Safety Board issued an urgent recommendation in June for WMATA to "promptly develop and implement a program to ensure that all power cable connector assemblies are properly constructed and installed."

“While the risk to the public is very low, I cannot rule out a potential life safety issue here, and this is why we must take this action immediately," Wiedefeld said at a news conference.

When the inspections are complete, Metro said, "there may be a need for additional rail service outages. Any further service impacts will be announced to the public as soon as they are known."

It's a stark and unprecedented step for the agency, particularly in the middle of a busy work week with Congress in session — and at the beginning of tourist season. Twitter users had already begun prepping for the complaint-fest to come, using the hashtag "#wmatageddon."

But the Metro system has also struggled to appear responsive to the Federal Transit Administration, which has exercised its new authority to seize oversight of local transit systems — starting with WMATA's rail function. The Department of Transportation announced that takeover in October.

Wiedefeld said he has spoken to Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx about the issue and that WMATA is coordinating with federal transportation regulators. NTSB and FTA officials have "been out already," he added.

Officials from the Department of Transportation, FTA and NTSB did not immediately respond to requests for comment Tuesday evening.

Wiedefeld said the situation is urgent, but not dire enough to completely disrupt the public's Tuesday evening commute.

"Because we brought people in," he said. "We want to give them the choice of what they want to do."